Ever since my time at Taizé last summer I have been contemplating what it means to describe God as "light." 

This is a central image in the Gospel of John and in 1 John. 1 John 1.5 says it plainly, "God is light." 

Light is also prominently featured in the Prologue of the Gospel of John, where the Logos is described as light:

In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 

What struck me today were the lines that soon follow, describing the reception of the light:

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.

In these passages we tend to focus upon the rejection of the light. The light comes into the world and the world "did not know him." But what struck me today in this verse was the phrase: "The true light, which enlightens everyone."

Against a backdrop of rejection a universal note is being struck. The verb here is present-tense ("enlightens") and the scope is "everyone" (literally, "all men/persons"). 

I'm cautious to push too hard here. John, it seems to me, is often more poet than theologian. Especially here in the Prologue. But I'm pondering how two contrasting things are being said here concerning the availability of the light.

First, everyone is standing in the light. The true light "enlightens everyone." That's a pretty wondrous and mysterious thing to contemplate. 

It raises a question: How, exactly, is the true light enlightening everyone? If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the "enlightenment" here is our shared participation in the divine Logos. Human rationality and consciousness, our ability to "see" and to "know" any "truth." Basically, if you posses a mind you are standing in the light. Everyone, as bearers of the image of God, possesses this ability, this enlightenment. As it says in the Psalms, "in Your light we see light." 

And as some physicists like to say, everything is made of light.  

And yet, the capacity to "see" and to "know" doesn't automatically lead to full illumination. We can turn our faces away from the Light to embrace shadows. You can fail to see the Light that enlightens you. Thus Paul's exhortation (1 Thess 5.5) that we strive to become "children of the day" and "children of light."

Out at the prison Bible study we were in the book of Ephesians.

One of the things we tracked through Ephesians was a theme of what some call "spiritual warfare," our struggles against the devil and other spiritual forces. A sampling of themes: 

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the children of disobedience... (2.1-2) 

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. (4.26-27)

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. (5.15-16)

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places...In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. (6.10-12, 16)

I remember when Fortress Press, now Broadleaf, first approached me to write a popular book. (My first three books--Unclean, The Authenticity of Faith, and The Slavery of Death--were scholarly books. Readers who have read all my books will have noticed a big contrast in style between those first three books and my last four.) When Fortress asked me about what sort of book I wanted to write, I had a quick answer: "I want to write a book about the devil." That's how Reviving Old Scratch came to be. 

That was a very odd and risky choice. The audience Fortress was aiming at was mainly the progressive Christian camp. And my own audience was mostly progressive. So no one saw a book on the devil coming. Progressives, for a variety of reasons related to their doubt, deconstruction, and demythologizing tendencies, just don't talk much about the devil. Given that, I had no idea who would even read Reviving Old Scratch. 

Why, then, did I want to write a book about the devil? It was the prison. For example, as we worked through those texts in Ephesians above it was the most natural and obvious conversation you could have. Those men out at the prison know the prince of the power of the air. They see the devil, clearly. So I wrote Reviving Old Scratch to bridge my worlds, the world of the prison and the world of the doubting progressive Christian. I wrote Reviving Old Scratch for an audience of one--myself. But many others have found the book helpful as well. Because when you read a book like Ephesians, it's hard to miss what is staring at you in the face.

We now reach Chapter 6 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution entitled "Violence Is Not Love." 

In this chapter Perry discusses the mainstreaming of sexual violence through popular depictions of BDSM, which stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism. 

Let me jump right into one of the more alarming treads we are observing among young people: the rising frequency of choking your partner during sex. 

For example, choking a partner during sex is now twice as common among younger generations when compared to older cohorts. Not surprisingly, women are more frequently choked than men. And when men are choked, it's often by another man. One study found that 58% of women on a college campus had been choked during sex. Ponder that. The majority of young women having sex today are now being choked. Research has also shown that allowing yourself to be choked is associated with poorer mental health.

Why has choking become mainstream? The research is also clear: Pornography. 

A generation has now been raised with online pornography, where violence, overwhelmingly toward women, has become normalized and eroticized. This is the fruit of the sexual revolution: We are a culture that now chokes women during sex. This is now the norm. A great advance for female liberation. Congratulations, sexual revolution. 

And since young women also have also been raised by porn, she assumes it is normal for her boyfriend to put his hand over her throat during sex. What other vision of sex does she have except what she's seen on PornHub? 

Finally, that being choked during sex is negatively affecting the mental health of young women should be a surprise to no one.

This week out at the prison we dipped into the book of Revelation. The topic of the evening was actually 2 Thessalonians, but our discussions about "the man of lawlessness" in Chapter 2 took us on a wild ride from Daniel to Revelation. 

The book of Revelation has become one of my very favorite books in the Bible. Not a lot of people agree. Many people find Revelation bizarre and triggering, too weird and bloody to be of any value. But as I shared with the men out at the unit, I've learned to love Revelation.

I love Revelation because it is a fierce and prophetic criticism of Empire. Revelation is a no holds barred takedown of Rome, and of every Imperial power that has followed in Rome's footsteps. Revelation isn't about "end times" prophecy. Nero is clearly 666 and Babylon, "that great city that rules over the kings of the earth," is clearly the Empire founded on the banks of the Tiber.

And the climax of Revelation is the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18. Three groups of people weep over the fallen city--the kings of the earth, the merchants, and the sea captains. The political and economic order of the world is wholly overthrown. And standing vindicated in the midst of the rubble of Empire are the saints of God.

I love Revelation because it teaches me to not "trust in princes," as it says in the Psalms. Or to put faith in exploitative economic systems. Revelation helps me discern the political and economic wreckage all around me. Revelation tells the truth about the world. Revelation helps me see Babylon, that "demon haunted city," who rules every nation and economy of the world.

In Hunting Magic Eels I describe how poetry can be a resource for re-enchantment. 

As I describe in the book, the "scientific gaze," which reduces reality to raw material "stuff," bleaches the world of value and meaning. We can think of poetry, then, as the opposite of the scientific gaze. The "poetic gaze" sees reality as suffused with meaning and value. As I argue in Hunting Magic Eels, poetry helps us recover a sacramental ontology. All of life becomes sign and symbol. 

Given this view of poetry, I was stuck by how C.S. Lewis, with a correspondent in 1949, once described the relationship between language, poetry and reality. Lewis wrote:

In a sense, one can hardly put anything into words: only the simplest colours have names, and hardly any of the smells. The simple physical pains and (still more) the pleasures can't be expressed in language. I labour the point lest the devil should hereafter try to make you believe that what was wordless was therefore vague and nebulous. But in reality it is just the clearest, the most concrete, and most indubitable realities which escape language: not because they are vague but because language is ... Poetry I take to be the continual effort to bring language back to the actual.

Some of you might have seen this quote from Bob Dylan in a recent interview: 

“I’m not a fan of packaged programs, or news shows, so I don’t watch them. I never watch anything foul smelling or evil. Nothing disgusting; nothing dog ass. I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.”

First, I agree with my friend Mark that "dog ass" has to enter the theological lexicon. :-) 

But I was mostly struck by Flannery O'Connorian tone of Dylan's quote. O'Connor and Dylan share an apocalyptic spiritual vision, painting the world in stark moral contrasts. It's this aesthetic that draws me to their art. Both O'Connor and Dylan play a high stakes poker game. Life and death. Salvation and Damnation. Saints and Sinners. 

As Dylan sang, a hard rain's a-gonna fall. Or as O'Connor wrote once, in what a few years back I took to be the byline of my blog, we trudge into the distance following the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus, for the Lord created us out of dust, made us blood and nerve and mind, made us to bleed and weep and think, and set us in a world of loss and fire.

That is the deep paradox of my theological vision, a progressive Christian who prefers fire and brimstone tent revivals. I like the Holy Rollers, snake handlers, and prophets of doom, because among them you feel that something is at stake. That's the whole point of the climactic scene (Spoiler alert!) in O'Connor's famous short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find." When the Misfit says about the grandmother, "She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” O'Connor is calling out our lack of existential urgency, and how that lulls us into a spiritual and moral slumber. 

I expect you are appalled. That you don't find any of this imagery inspiring. If you're a deconstructing, ex-evangelical you're feeling triggered. My apologies. You should know I'm not the best companion for progressives, evangelicals, or ex-evangelicals. But I'm not prescribing any of this for you. You do you. For my part, none of this imagery makes me feel afraid, guilty, or judgmental. I makes me feel alive. It wakes me up. It makes me feel that everything I do today matters. Life feels full of adventure, significance, and portent. Today has an edge. My heartbeat is eschatological. My pulse is apocalyptic. 

Maybe I feel this way because I'm well-adjusted. Or maybe because I'm deeply twisted. Who knows? But goodness, I'm loving the ride. And if you're a fan of either Dylan or O'Connor I expect you know what I'm talking about.

Reading the Bible with the damned also changed how I think about heaven. 

A great example of this is how I've come to think about the song "I'll Fly Away."

As regular readers know, my favorite thing to do out at the prison, in the middle of our two hour study, is to pull out old church hymnals to sing gospel songs. The men in the study shout out numbers, we flip to that page, and then sing. We've gotten very good at harmonies over the years!

If you grew up singing gospel songs out of hymnals you know that many of these songs are songs about heaven. "When We All Get to Heaven." "To Canaan's Land I'm on My Way." "When the Roll is Called Up Yonder." "In the Sweet By and By." "Blessed Assurance." "Higher Ground." "We're Marching to Zion."

But by far, the most favorite song about heaven that we sing out at the unit is "I'll Fly Away."

Again, when I started leading the Bible study out at the prison my theological sensibilities were progressive. Consequently, I held the standard progressive view about heaven and songs about heaven. Songs about heaven were escapist and triumphalistic. Songs about heaven expressed an "over-realized eschatology." Let me explain these terms and their interrelated concerns.

By "escapist" we mean that a yearning desire for heaven can cause us to ignore pressing moral duties here on earth. An "escapist" view of heaven can also have pernicious moral effects. For example, calls for creation care can fall on deaf ears if you feel that the world is soon about to end in an apocalyptic conflagration. If the earth is a dumpster fire why put it out if you feel the whole show is going up in smoke soon anyway?

By "triumphalistic" and "over-realized eschatology" we mean that the full blessings of heaven are claimed as actual and live today. This is most clearly seen in the Prosperity Gospel, where expectations of "blessing," "victory," and "favor" are very high in a world still characterized by pain, suffering, failure, tragedy and death. A triumphalistic and over-realized eschatology assumes a degree of immunity to misfortune in this life that is inappropriate and unrealistic, an immunity that can only be truly enjoyed in heaven. As Jesus said, in this world we will have trouble. All creation continues to groan.

Such concerns cause progressive Christians to marginalize talk of heaven. The focus is, rather, upon the pressing moral demands of earth, right here and right now, and attending to its locations of harm and brokenness. And I do think this is exactly right.

And yet, when I started singing "I'll Fly Away" out at the unit I began to hear that song differently. "I'll Fly Away" sounds different in a maximum-security prison than it does in the pews of an affluent, middle-class church. Once again, location, location, location.

Inside a prison the line that jumps out at you from "I'll Fly Away" comes from the second verse: "Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I'll fly away." How could that line not hit you with some force inside the walls of a prison? 

Inside a prison, and sung by the incarcerated, "I'll Fly Away" doesn't sound triumphalistic, it sounds like a lament. And if "I'll Fly Away" sounds "escapist," well, that's because you really do want to escape! 

Hearing "I'll Fly Away" sung by the damned caused me to reflect upon the origin of all those old gospel hymns about heaven. The people who sang and loved them. These were poor people living hard lives. These were Black churches facing slavery and segregation. The longing for escape was real and acute. These songs pointed away from today's despair toward future hope. 

These songs reminded them, and remind the damned even today, that there is a balm in Gilead. 

After describing the harms and oppressions women face in the porn industry, in Chapter 5 of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution Louise Perry turns to talk about the effects pornography has upon its consumers.

Perry starts by introducing us to the idea of "limbic capitalism," how online media appeals to and hijacks our brains. The business model of online and social media is to become more "addictive."

For example, advertisers know that our brains are wired to trigger off of sexual cues and stimuli. I can't tell you how many times a day I have to face a seductive image in an ad while I'm doing something totally innocuous on the internet. The online algorithms know I'm a man, and advertisers will use thumbnail pictures of women hoping that I'll chase those images with a click. Sex sells. And porn, obviously, takes this visual hijacking and manipulation to a whole other level. A Perry writes:

Porn is to sex as McDonald's is to food. These two capitalist enterprises take our natural appetites, pluck out the most compulsive and addictive elements, strip away anything truly nutritious, and then encourage us to consume more and more. Both products are examples of superstimuli: exaggerated versions of naturally occurring stimuli that tap into an evolved longing for nourishment, excitement and pleasure but do so in a maladaptive way, fooling the consumer into gorging on a product that initially feels good but in the long term does them harm.

One of the things that is harmed is our investment in and competencies for intimacy in real life, both emotional and erotic. One of the great ironies of the sexual revolution is how it was supposed to liberate us for more and better sex. However, the younger generations are having less sex and less satisfying sex when they do. Much of this is due to online porn, where sexual appetites can be sated without having to mess around with the complexities and demands of sex with a real person. It's just a lot easier to masturbate alone to porn. You don't have to learn how to cook, you can just drive through for fast food. We're quickly moving into a dystopian sexual future where sex is going to be wholly transferred from the human to the online, virtual and robotic. Robert Putnam wrote a famous book called Bowling Alone, documenting modern disconnection, isolation, and loneliness. The sexual revolution is writing its own version of that book: Having Sex Alone.  

The problem with the sexual revolution is that its message of "liberation" obscures a vital truth. Human sex is complicated. Sex is hard. Sex entangles us. Sex demands things of us. Things we owe each other as human beings. And when faced with this work--counting the costs, weighing the entanglements, surveying the relational complexities, shouldering the obligations--many just opt out for porn. It's a simple cost/benefit analysis. It's just a whole lot easier. 

And with each click our collective willingness and capacities for love slowly evaporate. That will be the ultimate legacy of the sexual revolution: a world that knows how to masturbate and has forgotten how to love.

Ah, the atonement wars!

If you've ever followed the conversations among deconstructing evangelicals, many of whom are now ex-evangelicals, you know that the atonement has been a site of debate and controversy. 

This debate has mostly focused on penal substitutionary atonement. I've written about these issues extensively on this blog, even recently. At the heart of the concern about penal substitutionary atonement is its focus upon sin, human guilt, and forgiveness.

Before spending time out at the prison, I shared these concerns without much nuance. Penal substitutionary atonement was just bad, across the board. But guess what? Guess what is a pressing spiritual and emotional concern inside a maximum-security prison?

If you guessed guilt and forgiveness, you win a prize.

Here's the thing, guilt is a problem. Shame is a curse. They really are. Consequently, forgiveness and grace are needed. Visions of atonement that address shame and guilt are dealing with deep and vital human concerns.

But it all comes down to location, location, location.

Should you, for example, use forensic metaphors with children and young people, cranking up the guilt to get a big emotional response from them at the end of your rally, retreat or camp experience? Probably not. But you might lean into forensic metaphors when working with people who have committed crimes that haunt them, who wonder if they can ever be forgiven for the horrible things they have done. Yeah, you might talk with these people about how their sins have been forgiven and their guilt washed away by the blood of the Lamb.

The prison taught me that forensic metaphors for atonement have their place. When you work in a space where guilt is the most pressing pastoral problem, you become thankful for the message of forgiveness, that our guilt and shame have been nailed to the cross. Before reading the Bible with the damned I never talked about much about these metaphors. But today, reading the Bible with the incarcerated, I talk about forgiveness quite often.

When I started leading the Bible study out at the prison I was in a season of deconstruction. Doubt and questioning were the engine of my spiritual life. Lament was what I was most interested in, the desolations of feeling abandoned by God.

So, when I first went out to the prison, one of my very first studies was going to be about the lament psalms. I was going to share with the inmates Walter Brueggemann's contrast between psalms of orientation, disorientation and reorientation, but leaning heavily into the psalms of disorientation. 

I made this decision because I felt that the prisoners would relate to lament, given their hard and dark circumstances. If anyone should feel God-abandoned, I assumed, surely it would be the incarcerated! Let me, then, help give voice to their lament. I thought this was a winning plan.

It didn't go so well.

About midway through my lesson on the lament psalms, really leaning into their despair, the men in the study started to grow restless and frustrated. Seeing this, I stopped. "What's going on?" I asked.

"Well," they responded, "We get it. We know. Prison is a really dark place. We don't need to be reminded of that." 

"Okay," I said, "Then if lament isn't what you need to hear, what do you need?"

"Hope," they shared. "We need some hope."

This seems blindingly obvious to me now. And in my spiritual biography this exchange was the critical turning point in my season of deconstruction, the hinge moment when I began my season of reconstruction.

Starting that night out at the prison, I began to preach about hope. Given where I was at the time--I was an angsty progressive Christian--this wasn't easy. But I grew into it. Men in a very hopeless place taught me to hope. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Location, location, location. Hope and lament are contextual. In privileged spaces, lament is all the rage. If I were to write on this blog, "we need more lament in the church" I'd get a chorus of Amens from you. And the reason for that is contextual. When a privileged church leans too far into praise, that can be obscene and inappropriate. The winners are praising God for being the winners. Lament among privileged people is good medicine as it forces us to attend to those parts of the world where people aren't winning, where life is broken and painful. In spaces of power, peace, wholeness, and affluence, lament seasons our praise, making it more truthful and honest, keeping us close to where the bleeding is happening in the world.

In short, lament helps a privileged church resist becoming triumphalistic. Lament makes sense in that social location.

But out at the prison, and among the poor, I've learned that hope is the more needed message. In these locations lament is already there and baked in. Despair doesn't need any more attention. Despair is the temptation. What is needed is a move from desolation to hope. 

So, what do you need to to hear? Do I need to draw your attention to the brokenness of the world? Or do you need, as you sit in the ashes, a message of hope? 

Location, location, location.

As a prison chaplain, a book that has meant a lot to me over the years is Bob Ekblad's Reading the Bible with the Damned. 

In Reading the Bible with the Damned Bob describes how the Bible sounds when we read it on the margins of society. Bob opens the Bible with prisoners, the poor, and undocumented immigrants, asking them to share what they hear as "good news" in the pages of Scripture. Bob is sill reading the Bible with the damned, and you can follow his ministry Tierra Nueva. 

What I've learned from Bob's work, and in my own experiences leading Bible studies in a maximum-security prison, is how dramatically location changes how you hear the Bible. When it comes to reading Scripture, it really does come down to that famous line about retail and real estate: Location, location, location.

I actually teach two Bible classes a week, back to back. On Sundays, I regularly teach an adult Bible class at my church. Then, on Monday evening, I teach the class out at the prison. Having these classes side by side each week over the last ten years I've noticed the contrasts, how a message appropriate to one audience is inappropriate for the other. Good News for respectable, educated, middle-class people at a church on a Sunday isn't necessarily Good News for the incarcerated. And messages that would be dismissed or sneered at in seminary classrooms are received as water in a dry and thirsty land out at the unit. 

In short, I've learned that the gospel is contextual. And I've come to appreciate the missionary posture of Paul. As Paul once shared, 

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. (1 Cor. 9.20-22)

I have learned a lot about Scripture by reading Bible with the damned. In three posts to follow I'll share three of those lessons, how location, location, location can radically change the shape of the gospel proclamation. 

As the most existential book in the Bible, Ecclesiastes is an odd duck. Ecclesiastes is so odd it makes you wonder how it made it into the canon. 

And within in the canon, what is Ecclesiastes doing? How is Ecclesiastes supposed to be read? Because Ecclesiastes could be read very subversively, as undermining the whole of Scripture. In fact, some scholars have suggested that the final coda to Ecclesiastes was added to pull its overall message back into safer, more orthodox waters. 

Ecclesiastes is existential dynamite. How should we read it?

Here's my take on how Ecclesiastes fits into the larger concerns of the Old Testament. 

I think you can make a good argument that the primary concern of the Old Testament is idolatry. And for most of the Old Testament, idolatry is described as covenantal infidelity, lusting after false gods.

Ecclesiastes, by contrast, looks at idolatry from a very different perspective. Ecclesiastes uses hebel to attack idolatry. Idolatry in Ecclesiastes is less about fidelity to God than human vanity. Ecclesiastes uses existentialism to destroy the idols of human presumption and delusion.

Consequently, in its attack on idolatry, I think Ecclesiastes is very much within the mainstream of the Old Testament witness, just approaching those concerns from a radically different angle. Instead of raging like the prophets about Israel's infidelity, Ecclesiastes uses death as a universal acid, pouring it over every human idol.

And while I love the prophets, few of us have a shrine to Baal in the house or an Asherah pole in the backyard. So if you want to expose and indict the vanity and vacuousness of idolatry in modern life there is no better book than Ecclesiastes: The dollars in your bank account. Hebel. The degrees hanging on your wall. Hebel. Your big house. Hebel. That new iPhone. Hebel. Your buff body. Hebel. The American flag. Hebel.

We are people chasing the wind. And with that ground now cleared, we can turn to talk about right worship and build upon more secure foundations.

We now move into Chapter 5 of Louise Perry's The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, a chapter devoted to, in Perry's words, "the predatory nature of the porn industry and its destructive effects on the people involved in it."

Perry starts the chapter by sharing the stories of two female icons of porn, Linda Lovelace (real name Linda Boreman), who starred in Deep Throat, the film that brought hard core porn into the mainstream, and Jenna Jameson, named "the Queen of Porn" for being one of the most successful porn stars in history. As Perry recounts, the stories of both Boreman and Jameson reveal how the narratives around porn can quickly switch. When working inside the industry, porn stars tell a story of sexual liberation and female empowerment. Both Boreman and Jameson fiercely defended their work from moral critics. And yet, once they left the industry, this narrative quickly changed, as both women became harsh critics of the porn industry. For example, Boreman has made the blunt statement that, "everyone that watches Deep Throat is watching me being raped." And, as Perry sharply notes, people are still watching.

After recounting the stories of women who have worked within the porn industry, Perry then turns her attention to Pornhub. Pornhub, as I expect you know, is the largest online purveyor of porn. Pornhub is run by the secretive tech company MindGeek, and both Pornhub and MindGeek have been under fire in recent years for knowingly hosting videos of sex trafficked children and non-consensual sex (otherwise known as rape) on their website. More, when asked to remove these videos by victims Pornhub regularly and systematically fails to remove them. And beyond Pornhub, many porn companies, like GirlsDoPorn, lure young girls wanting to be models or actors into hotel rooms were they are coerced into having sex on camera. These videos are then sold for a profit.

I don't think it is a surprise to anyone that the porn industry is evil. I don't see how anyone could look at the whole of the industry and claim that porn is good for women or advances female liberation. And yet, there is a pervasive ambivalence in our culture about crusading against porn. Any other industry that did this much damage to women and children would have long ago been canceled. Protestors daily in the streets. I recall the progressive outrage when the owner of Chick-fil-A merely expressed his personal opinion about traditional marriage. That was it, a personal opinion. I have progressive friends who have never eaten at a Chick-fil-A again. But ask these same people if they know anything about MindGeek, well, you'll get a blank stare. Mindwhat? Purveyors of child abuse and rape don't really demand progressive attention.

The hypocrisies here are telling. A man in a workplace setting can become a moral pariah for the slightest of microaggressions toward a woman in the office. (For example, I've seen men upbraided for addressing a classroom with "Ladies and Gentlemen." The word "ladies" being offensive.) And yet, girls can be raped and children trafficked on film with those outrages barely mentioned on progressive Twitter. And that asymmetry of outrage has everything to do with the sexual revolution. To be against porn is to be against sex, and that's the last place a progressive wants to be. To be an anti-porn crusader would be to join forces with despised religious groups, or give implicit support to things like evangelical purity culture. The imperatives of the sexual revolution are clear: You have to be, 100% of the time, pro-sex. No matter what. Even if that means you have to go quiet about the porn industry. Women the the workplace are vociferously protected from the slightest of insults, as they should be, but the oppressions and harms of the porn industry, where rape, abuse, and coercion occur to thousands of women every single day, well, that is passed over in silence.

And the ironies abound. For who, do we think, benefits from the filming, uploading, and monetizing of rape and child abuse? As both the producers and the consumers? Men! It's yet another example of how many feminists are deeply supportive of the patriarchy, using the pro-sex message of the sexual revolution to satisfy the sexual appetites of men. 

In the last two posts I highlighted the translation of of hebel in the book of Ecclesiastes. Where most English translations translate hebel as "vanity" or "meaninglessness" hebel's literal meaning is vapor, breath or mist. Life, according to Ecclesiastes, isn't vain or meaningless, life is fleeting.

Consider other texts where this meaning of hebel is very clear:

Psalm 39.5
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath [hebel],
even those who seem secure.

Psalm 114.3-4
Lord, what are human beings that you care for them,
mere mortals that you think of them?
They are like a breath [hebel];
their days are like a fleeting shadow.

And while Psalm 90 doesn't mention hebel, it is very much a description of hebel and suggests that a proper understanding of hebel creates a "heart of wisdom":

Psalm 90.3-6, 10, 12
You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.

Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.

Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Life is hebel, our years "quickly pass, and then we fly away." So the encouragement in Psalm 90 is, in my estimation, the same encouragement in Ecclesiastes: "Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

In light of this, what about the great theme of vanity in the book of Ecclesiastes?

Again, I'd argue that hebel itself isn't "vanity" or "meaninglessness," those translations are second-order value judgments that reflect how hebel, given its transient nature, can create futility in human striving. This is less a commentary about the intrinsic nature of hebel than how we attempt to grasp at hebel, the "chasing after the wind" mentioned repeatedly in Ecclesiastes. What is vain is this grasping and chasing after hebel. It's the interaction of the two--hebel plus grasping--that creates the futility.

So what are we chasing? What are we grasping at?

A clue comes right at the start of the book, in 1.3:

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?

The word translated as "gain" here is yithron. Yithron only occurs ten times in the OT, and all of those occurrences are in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Yithron is variously translated as "gain," "profit," or "advantage." The basic idea is that of accumulation, excess, and remainder--what is "left over." Basically, to use a financial metaphor, yithron is getting life "into the black" as it were.

Obviously, because life is hebel, efforts to "gain" are futile and vain. Thus the examples given in the first part of Ecclesiastes about how all sorts of efforts at gaining or acquiring--creating an "excess"--are futile. Death washes any sort of "profit"--the excess remainder of your life--away.

This acquisitive grasping--this chasing after the wind--is what is vain. It's the combination of hebel and yithron that makes for the vanity. Crudely:

hebel + yithron = vanity

wind + chasing = vanity

I highlight this interaction between hebel and yithron as, again, I don't think the fleeting nature of life is intrinsically meaningless or vain. Rather, it is how we stand in relation to hebel that creates the problems. The problem, to create a neologism, is a yithronic posture toward hebel--a grasping, profiting, acquiring, acquisitive, chasing attitude given life's fleeting, vaporous, misty, impermanent, and transitory nature. 

I mentioned yesterday that most Bible translations do not translate the Hebrew word hebel literally in the book of Ecclesiastes, as "mist" or "vapor." Such a translation would highlight the fleeting and transitory nature of life. Rather, most Bible translations translate hebel as "vanity" or "meaninglessness."

One translation that does attempt to stick to a more literal translation of hebel is The Voice. Throughout Ecclesiastes, The Voice consistently translates hebel as "fleeting." 

To get a feel for how that translation might change a reading of Ecclesiastes, years ago I made for my Bible class a table comparing the NIV with The Voice listing every passage containing hebel in Ecclesiastes. That table is below:

	The Voice	NIV
1:2	Teacher: Life is fleeting, like a passing mist. It is like trying to catch hold of a breath; All vanishes like a vapor; everything is a great vanity.	“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
1:14	I have witnessed all that is done under the sun, and indeed, all is fleeting, like trying to embrace the wind.	I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
2:1	I said to myself, “Let me dabble and test you in pleasure and see if there is any good in that.” But look, that, too, was fleeting.	I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless.
2:11	As I continued musing over all I had accomplished and the hard work it took, I concluded that all this, too, was fleeting, like trying to embrace the wind. Is there any real gain by all our hard work under the sun?	Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
2:15	I said to myself, “Why do I try to be wise when my fate is the same as that of the fool? This pursuit is fleeting too.”	Then I said to myself, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said to myself, “This too is meaningless.”
2:17	So I began to hate life itself because all that is done under the sun is so harsh and difficult. Life—everything about it—is fleeting; it’s like trying to pursue the wind.	So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
2:19	And who knows whether my heir will be wise or foolish? Still he will inherit all the things for which I worked so hard here under the sun, the things for which I became wise. This, too, is fleeting like trying to catch hold of a breath.	And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless.
2:21	Although someone with wisdom, knowledge, and skill works hard, when he departs this life, he will leave all he has accomplished to another who has done nothing to deserve work’s reward. This, too, is fleeting, and it causes great misery.	For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.
2:23	For every day is filled with pain and every job has its own problems, and there are nights when the mind doesn’t stop and rest. And once again, this is fleeting.	All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
2:26	To those who seek to please God, He gives wisdom and knowledge and joyfulness; but to those who are wicked, God keeps them busy harvesting and storing up for those in whom He delights. But even this is fleeting; it’s like trying to embrace the wind.	To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
3:19	The fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same. As one dies, so does the other, for we have the same breath within us. In the end, we have no advantage over the animals. For as I have said, it’s all fleeting.	Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless.
4:4	Then I saw yet another thing: envy fuels achievement. All the work and skills people develop come from their desire to be better than their neighbors. Even this is fleeting, like trying to embrace the wind.	And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
4:7	Again I observed another example of how fleeting life is under the sun:	Again I saw something meaningless under the sun:
4:16	There seemed to be no limit to all the people who were under his authority. Yet those who will come later will not be happy with him and will refuse to follow him. Even this, you see, is fleeting—power and influence do not last—like trying to pursue the wind.	There was no end to all the people who were before them. But those who came later were not pleased with the successor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
5:7	Daydreaming and excessive talking are pointless and fleeting things to do, like trying to catch hold of a breath. What good comes from them? It is better to quietly reverence God.	Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God.
5:10	As the saying goes: Those who love money will never be satisfied with money, and those who love riches will never be happy with what they have. This, too, is fleeting.	Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless.
6:2	Sometimes God gives money, possessions, and even honor, so that we have everything a person might desire; nothing is lacking. But then, for reasons God only knows, God does not allow him to enjoy the good gifts. Rather, a stranger ends up enjoying them. This, too, is fleeting; it’s a sickening evil.	God gives some people wealth, possessions and honor, so that they lack nothing their hearts desire, but God does not grant them the ability to enjoy them, and strangers enjoy them instead. This is meaningless, a grievous evil.
6:4	because the stillborn arrives in a fleeting breath and then goes nameless into the darkness mourned by no one and buried in an unmarked grave.	It comes without meaning, it departs in darkness, and in darkness its name is shrouded.
6:9	It is better to enjoy what our eyes see than to long for what our roving appetites desire. This, too, is fleeting, like trying to embrace the wind.	Better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
7:6	For the laughter of fools is like the hiss and crackle of burning thorns beneath a pot. This, too, is fleeting.	Like the crackling of thorns under the pot, so is the laughter of fools. This too is meaningless.
7:15	In the fleeting time I have lived on this earth, I have seen just about everything: the good dying in their goodness and the wicked living to a ripe old age.	In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: the righteous perishing in their righteousness, and the wicked living long in their wickedness.
8:10	I have witnessed the wicked buried with honor because during their lifetimes they would go in and out of the temple, and soon their crimes were forgotten in the very city where they committed them. This, too, is fleeting.	Then too, I saw the wicked buried—those who used to come and go from the holy place and receive praise in the city where they did this. This too is meaningless.
8:14	Here is another example of the fleeting nature of our world: there are just people who get what the wicked deserve; there are wicked people who get what the just deserve. I say this, too, is fleeting.	There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.
9:9	Enjoy life with the woman you love. Cherish every moment of the fleeting life which God has given you under the sun. For this is your lot in life, your great reward for all of your hard work under the sun.	Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.
11:8	If a person lives many years, then he should learn to enjoy each and every one; but he should not forget the dark days ahead, for there will be plenty of them. All that is to come—whether bright days or dark—is fleeting.	However many years anyone may live, let them enjoy them all. But let them remember the days of darkness, for there will be many. Everything to come is meaningless.
11:10	When all is said and done, clear your mind of all its worries. Free your body of all its troubles while you can, for youth and the prime of life will soon vanish.	So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless.
12:8	Life is fleeting; it just slips through your fingers. All vanishes like mist.	“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Everything is meaningless!”